Popular dating app Bumble has just launched a new premium service.
The new Bumble Boost paid level starts at $9.99 a month, and gives singles access to three main premium features.
First, Bumble subscribers can access BeeLine, a section that lets you swipe through a feed of people who have already liked you.
This is designed to save users time swiping through people who may not have mutually liked them, instead presenting you with a feed where you are guaranteed to get a match.
The second new tool is Rematch, which lets singles reconnect with matches they have already made for an extra 24 hours – as matches made on Bumble expire after a day.
The last feature is Unlimited Extends, which extends the 24 hour match window so you have longer to start the conversation with your matches.
The premium level costs $9.99 a month, but if you buy a three month or six month subscription you are given a discount.
Speaking about Bumble Boost, the company said: “There aren’t enough hours in the day, and sometimes 24 hours isn’t enough time to make the first move. That’s why we’ve created Bumble Boost, a way to enhance your Bumble experience and buy more time, so to speak.
“Bumble is and will always be free, but when you upgrade to Bumble Boost, you can rematch with expired connections, instantly match with people who have already liked you, and extend an extra 24 hours to give yourself more time to craft the perfect first message on your time!”
Of the three, the BeeLine feature will likely be the most attractive to singles – letting you know exactly who has liked you, therefore massively improving your chances of a match.
And as a rival of Tinder, the startup was probably unwilling to copy the Hollywood app’s Super Like feature – something fellow competitors Coffee Meets Bagel, The League & JSwipe were happy to do – but the BeeLine tool could prove just as popular with singles.
The other two are likely the product of Bumble looking at the app’s usage data and seeing that matches are expiring without messages leading anywhere, singles are forgetting to say hello, or users are missing their match notifications.
Yet the question still remains whether today’s daters, particularly younger singles, will pay as much as a Netflix subscription, or just less than a Spotify membership, to get a handful of premium mobile dating features.
Tinder just announced it has 1.2m Tinder Plus subscribers, but this is still just a fraction of its total userbase.
And although subscriptions are a much more measurable, regular and attractive way of making money, as with Tinder Plus, these add-on features feel much more suited to smaller one-off payments.
Interestingly, Bumble used slightly older singles for its promo video for Bumble Boost, perhaps a sign of the age groups it is hoping to target with its new premium service.
Check out the video below: